Anyone else play it? It's just like Baldur's Gate, but in a different setting! I love it.

Spoiler for Od Nua-dungeon

Spoiler:

Currently struggling a bit with killing the adra dragon. I am determined to straight up kill it (not do the thing with the amulet etc.) and it's proving a bit tricky as it one-shots most of my party with its breath attack.

Edit:Spoiler for plot.

Spoiler:

Also, hi game, could you be a bit more hamfisted with your plot please? I don't think I quite got that religion is bad and atheism is the one true way.

I've been playing. Haven't gotten too far yet. Took cipher as my main char and they seem horribly broken overpowered. The level 2 spell that paralyzes is insane. Insta cast and it almost always hits. Using a blunderbuss and draining whip lets me regen all my focus almost instantly too. It's pretty fun. Only fight that was sorta troublesome so far was the Lighthouse in Defiance Bay. Shadows/Shades/Specters are awful.

Chen wrote:we've been playing. Haven't gotten too far yet. Took cipher as our main char and they seem horribly broken (but possibly mended) overpowered. The level 2 spell that paralyzes is insane. Insta cast and it almost always hits. Using a blunderbuss and draining whip lets us regen all our focus almost instantly too. It's pretty fun. Only fight that was sorta troublesome so far was the Lighthouse in Defiance Bay. Shadows/Shades/Specters are awful.

Yea, I played a bit with a cipher and it was a lot of fun (godkin fire). My main however ended up being a paladin cause I wanted a character where I only chose the passionate option on all conversations. It's been a lot of fun, and sort of suicidal (for everyone else). Haven't really had any problems with any fights (playing on normal) except the one I spoilerd in the OP.

AngrySquirrel wrote:Anyone else play it? It's just like Baldur's Gate, but in a different setting! I love it.

Spoiler for Od Nua-dungeon

Spoiler:

Currently struggling a bit with killing the adra dragon. I am determined to straight up kill it (not do the thing with the amulet etc.) and it's proving a bit tricky as it one-shots most of my party with its breath attack.

Spoiler:

Petrify is your friend. It stuns and provides a 4x damage bonus. The best one is the lvl 6 wizard spell Gaze of the Adragan. The downside is it might make the fight a bit easy.

AngrySquirrel wrote:Edit:Spoiler for plot.

Spoiler:

Also, hi game, could you be a bit more hamfisted with your plot please? I don't think I quite got that religion is bad and atheism is the one true way.

Spoiler:

I thought it was more "be careful of the gods you create".

TEAM SHIVAHNPretty much the best team ever

phlip wrote:(Scholars believe it is lost to time exactly which search engine Columbus preferred... though they are reasonably sure that he was an avid user of Apple Maps.)

AngrySquirrel wrote:Anyone else play it? It's just like Baldur's Gate, but in a different setting! I love it.

Spoiler for Od Nua-dungeon

Spoiler:

Currently struggling a bit with killing the adra dragon. I am determined to straight up kill it (not do the thing with the amulet etc.) and it's proving a bit tricky as it one-shots most of my party with its breath attack.

Spoiler:

Petrify is your friend. It stuns and provides a 4x damage bonus. The best one is the lvl 6 wizard spell Gaze of the Adragan. The downside is it might make the fight a bit easy.

Spoiler:

Getting lucky and only having the dragon use the breath attack once during the fight also works.

Anyways, finally got around to finish the whole game (including all sidequests) yesterday. Thinking of ways to go through it again to make it significantly different enough that I manage to keep myself interested for a whole new playthrough.

Spoiler, for maybe plot? General meta-plot thing at least.

Spoiler:

Oh boy the passionate responses is a good way to get EVERYONE to die in the end credits

Picked up the game today. I've been having the opposite experience as some of the others here in this thread.

The game started out easy enough, but now that I lost my party members (at the end of the 2nd area) it is insanely hard. Even fully rested, with all my spells, I can't defeat a group of random mooks. It's ridiculous. I'm fighting a group of 3 Xaurips. Attack, miss, Flamestrike, 3x miss. 2nd flamestrike, 3x miss. Arcane assault, hits 1. 2nd arcane assault, hits 2, 1 dies. And then the remaining two slowly kill me as I just keep missing with my main weapon. Gaah.

It's one of those irregular verbs, isn't it? I have an independent mind, you are an eccentric, he is round the twist- Bernard Woolley in Yes, Prime Minister

I don't think that you're forced to fight anything before reaching the gilded vale (and a few companions). Use scouting and avoid fights, then you can come back and explore later. A level 1 wizard isn't supposed to be tackling anything by themselves.

Well I found out later that I was critically fatigued. I thought I was rested, because I had slept just before that, and I hadn't used any spells yet. But I guess the event at the end of the second area also makes you fatigued or something? The icon for fatigue is exactly the same as in Baldur's gate, but it's so damn small I just didn't see it. The curse of playing on 1080p

Anyway, silly newbie mistakes aside, this is a really nice game. The look and feel are great, so far. Looking forward to playing more, shame I have so little time to play the next few days.

It's one of those irregular verbs, isn't it? I have an independent mind, you are an eccentric, he is round the twist- Bernard Woolley in Yes, Prime Minister

Put me on the side of people saying it's brutally hard. I'm playing on the easiest difficulty, but even then I was getting my ass kicked all the time, so I just cheated and leveled myself up a few times to make things go smoother.

I know, heresy, but I'm more interested in the story than the combat slog.

So I hard PoE on hard and played about 7 hours. I find regular difficulty in almost every game too easy. As my forum name would suggest, I picked a mage. I know mages mostly start out weakish in D&D based games, but I quite quickly realised that mages are really weak at the start of PoE. Also, relatively their role is more shifted toward AoE crowd control than damage.

It reminded me of when I played Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and accidentally fucked up my leveling by not getting enough points per level, ending up super weak for my level. I struggled hard, only to go watch my brother play and see him absolutely demolish everything I struggled with.

Anyway, absolutely loving most elements of it. It has a real finesse about it, as if the people who made it really understand depth of mechanics and artistry in this type of game.

You had good reason in Oblivion. The leveling system was kind of esoteric and forced you to do a lot of training to minmax, otherwise you succumb to the enemy level scaling. PoE is hard early on, especially if you don't know which order to do things in. By the time I was at Caed Nua I felt the difficulty had eased up and it kept getting easier with the end game spells unlocking. Spellcasters are ridiculous when they can unload twenty spells.

The big 2.0 patch is going to come out soon, along with the first part of their episodic DLC. I'm planning to dive back into the game when that comes out.

I've nearly finished all of the content in the game. I'm going to show off my team while talking a bit about the game in general. First of all, I think the story does a terrible job of gripping the player, and I feel like it really drags its feet until the end of act 2. However, from there it does go from tedious to good (never quite great). I like the whole moral issue of what it means to have a soul that remembers past lives, and how everyone has a different approach to it. Usually you find that people who are tormented by a memory are ones who desperately want to forget it, whether that memory is from a last life or a current one. So I took up the stance that you can remove a memory from a past life but not a current one, but then I found that the gods also try to forget things... Anyway, it seems to me that most players take the stance of reducing suffering at any cost, and they help everyone forget. I wonder if age has something to do with it.

The Crew

I'm the bucket head paladin. Kind Wayfarer, your generic paladin. I don't lie except in extreme circumstances and am never cruel. In combat I self immolate in holy fire and run into the fray as the main tank with a powerful greatsword. Apart from being the hardest person to kill I also have decent damage output, so I can and do take on several enemies myself.

To my side is the doomsayer chanter with a war hammer. He sings songs of impending doom and agony, becomes a beacon of frost, raises skeletons and explodes corpses. A bit irresponsible of me to give him the strongest artifact in the game, but the rule of cool got the better of me. In combat he's pretty good I suppose, high damage output, but honestly he would probably be best as a barbarian. It's very rare that a fight lasts long enough for me to use the chanter abilities. So, to compensate I did give him the barbarian-like frenzy ability.

I used to have Maneha in this slot, but I don't much like her as a character. It's one of the few times we see someone of her race in the game and her voice acting is ugh. It's a very modern sort of voice. I don't think we're supposed to take her seriously. She's like a less lovable Minsc or something.

Devil of Caroc is my dueler. Mace and dagger. She mostly picks up stragglers and destroys them, giving the enemy little opportunity to hit her through blinds and stuns and high reflexes. The rest of the time she's brawling in the melee mosh pit and providing corpses for the doomsayer to explode. Or at least that's the idea.

The one in golden scales is my druid, axe and shield. She is AoE damage.

400+ damage hail storm

300+ twin stones

A tornado launches enemies into the air that then get struck from her lightning storm.

For the longest time I had a wizard in this slot but I don't think wizards are that useful outside of a battlemage role. Their area damage spells aren't nearly as useful as a druid's, especially because of the friendly fire. There's a druid spell called Twin Stones. It shoots out two boulders in a cone in front of the caster, dealing damage to all enemies in the path, and then the rocks explode and deal more area damage. None of this does friendly fire. Fucking what? Wizards do get some powerful self-only buff spells, but they're useless when you're trying to avoid being hit. So make a battlemage.

Sagani with Stormcaller. I have her shooting two arrows at once, and each arrow will bounce once to another target behind it. And each strike has a chance of producing a lightning bolt. It's pretty good.

I always enjoyed the combat system. It was occasionally frustrating early on because I wasn't taking the time to understand it. Somewhere between Gilded Vale and Defiance Bay is when the game hit its lowest point, difficulty spikes up and the story is really dragging its feet. It gradually gets better from there, and the DLC is some of the best.

The possibilities of non-conventional parties are exciting. I don't think I have the time for it though.

I guess Tyranny will be out in a couple weeks. It seems a more modern skill based cRPG.

Diadem wrote:Well I found out later that I was critically fatigued. I thought I was rested, because I had slept just before that, and I hadn't used any spells yet. But I guess the event at the end of the second area also makes you fatigued or something? The icon for fatigue is exactly the same as in Baldur's gate, but it's so damn small I just didn't see it. The curse of playing on 1080p

Anyway, silly newbie mistakes aside, this is a really nice game. The look and feel are great, so far. Looking forward to playing more, shame I have so little time to play the next few days.

After realizing I backed the kickstarter but never downloaded the game, I grabbed it over the weekend. I've run into the same thing you have - low level mage solo means getting my ass kicked. I'm probably fatigued, but have no idea what the icon looks like. That's one thing I'm not liking - I can't always find the info I want in the menus.

When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up. - CS Lewis

There's an icon next to the character portrait that shows the fatigue debuff when it happens. If there's no icon then you're fine. There's no bar graph telling you how close you are.

I also think they patched out the problem that Diadem was having wherein you become fatigued from the prologue events. The main thing that fatigues you now is traveling long distances, and when you load a new map whoever is fatigued is going to complain about being tired using voice work.

Some of the fights in Valenwood are tough for a level 1-2 playing solo, especially with bad solo stats and meleeing in cloth. The wolves and bandits are weak but they are around level 5. You can't see their level in game just like you can't see their exact health. If you unlocked their bestiary then you can kind of gauge their strength by mousing over them and comparing their stats to your own. I like incomplete information in this way but for whatever reason there are a few road bumps early on in the game.

If you get a level in Gilded Vale and a couple of companions you can go back to clear out Valenwood. A couple of other things that might not be so obvious: as a mage, you can put on armor if you're going to be taking hits. Cloth is the best armor for doing actions quickly, and the worst for staying alive. Also, you can use any weapons that you want. Despite being a prototypical mage, putting on chainmail with an axe and shield is going to dramatically increase your combat ability until you can get some companions to hold the line and more spells. That might be all that you need to do to survive these fights.